Ivan Belkov — an artist living in Spain — published this story on Facebook in the first days of the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war, because many social media users from Azerbaijan had begun saying that there had been no Baku pogroms and that Armenians had made them up. Using the hashtag #MyFamilyToo, Ivan started a movement that was taken up by other people who had lived through the same thing.
Facebook quickly deleted the original post because it contained the word “Azer”, which the social network considers offensive to Azerbaijanis, although in this case Azer is the actual name of one of the people in the story. Kalemon is publishing Ivan’s story with minor edits.
Mom put us to bed and went to the bedroom to get ready for bed herself — for her, it is a whole ritual. Dad had been sent away on duty back in October. As we later learned, most of the men in our building were away on duty or at their posts at the time — officers’ families lived there.